Live at The Tuning Fork
27 February 2026
Live Review by Music Journalist: Paul Marshall
No Queue, No Limits: DUB FX & Tiki Taane Turn Intimacy into Dub-Fuelled Transcendence.
There are nights when you swagger to the door expecting elbows, leather jackets and a queue curling round the block and then there are nights when you and your mate from the UK stroll up right on doors and… nothing. No line. No chaos. No rock ’n’ roll theatre. Just the eerie calm before the bass drops.
That was the scene walking into DUB FX & Tiki Taane tonight, the later a man I’d been talking up all week to my friend Tim, freshly arrived from Britain and primed for a taste of Aotearoa’s finest sonic mischief-maker. Taane, the genre-bending ex-frontman of Salmonella Dub, the architect of the platinum-selling dub rework of Always On My Mind, and the founder of his fiercely independent Tikidub empire, this was meant to be a moment.
Instead, we were first in. Unfashionably so.
Over the next 25 minutes, a polite trickle of humanity filtered through the doors. I braced myself for a light night. Maybe it was a late crowd. Maybe support act Dylan C was flying under the radar.
Then Dylan C hit the stage, four minutes early, no less, with a thick, rolling dub cut that immediately reframed the evening. I reached for Shazam. Shazam reached for a white flag. Utter failure. Which, in DJ terms, is the highest compliment. This wasn’t Spotify karaoke; this was crate-digging alchemy.
Tenacious as ever, I ditched the algorithm and trusted the grey matter. The next groove, a dubbed-out interpretation of Dem Only Know by Rhombus, sent the now-growing crowd into gentle convulsions. Heads nodded. Feet tapped. Shoulders rolled. The tune was infectious in the way only deep New Zealand dub can be, unpretentious, bass-led, spiritual without needing incense.
Later, a smoky ripple of Portishead drifted across the room, not the original, but a version by PortisDub, the alias of American producer 6Blocc, real name Raoul Gonzalez. Dylan C was stitching together a global dub conversation, and the dance floor was starting to listen closely.
By the time the headliners arrived, the room roughly 300 strong, felt alive. A glorious mix of ages, dreadlocked rastas, seasoned gig-goers, and three particularly chatty lads who shared a bit of our bar leaner and cheerily informed me they’d “dropped the shrooms.” Judging by their luminous grins, they were about to have the night of their lives.
Then, with minimal ceremony, DUB FX, born Benjamin Stanford, Australian by origin, Valencia-based by evolution, joined Taane onstage.
From song one, they hit it hard.
DUB, looping vocals into a live-built rhythmic engine, created a static crackle with his voice, beatbox, bassline, distortion, all human, all real-time. Taane stepped in, black tee, black jeans, the anti-hero silhouette to DUB’s white-shirted light. Good guy and dark knight. Except anyone who’s met Taane knows there’s no darkness there, just heart, humility and a deep love of community.
Second track in: “Soldiers of Fire.” Their voices blended like brothers separated by oceans but connected by sub frequencies. It’s no secret these two share a mutual origin story, DUB has often said he discovered Taane at 17; Taane has credited DUB with inspiring him to explore looping. Sliding doors moments that rewired both their careers and, tonight, lit up this room.
“We’ve got loads of new tunes for you tonight, I hope you’ve got your dancing shoes on,” Taane grinned.
Cue a sea of bobbing heads. The crowd moved like salmon fighting upstream, relentless, communal, joyous.
The stage design centred around Taane’s giant neon Tikidub face, a glowing tribal totem dominating the backdrop. But the real wizardry came from the lighting desk. When Taane or DUB stepped in front of the neon logo, instead of blocking it, they glowed from the front in perfectly matched colour. I had to ask the lighting tech afterwards. The answer? He’d sourced the exact logo dimensions and colour tone, building a front-facing light to mirror the neon precisely. Genius. The kind of subtle brilliance most punters miss but that elevates a show from good to cinematic.
Not everything landed perfectly. At times Taane remained shadowed, disappearing into darkness leaving only his voice in focus. But when the moving lights turned outward and lit the fans themselves, swirling beams catching ecstatic faces, the gig became participatory art. The crowd wasn’t just watching. They were in it.
At one point they invited MCs from the audience to jump onstage. No takers. Not even the psychedelic trio at our bar post. Opportunity missed, gentlemen.
DUB was relentless. Looping layers with millisecond timing. At one point he sang two consecutive parts in entirely different vocal registers, morphing into what sounded like a second MC. It wasn’t. It was all him. A one-man sound system in perpetual motion, pacing the stage in white trainers and shorts like a preacher of bass-heavy salvation.
“I think it’s time for drum and bass,” he declared.
And just like that, lift-off.
There were political undertones threaded through the set. Personally, I’ve always wrestled with politics colliding too directly with music, escapism has its place but art has always carried protest in its bloodstream. It didn’t derail the night; if anything, it added conviction.
“We released this album this year,” Taane said, before adding with a grin that you won’t find it on Spotify, a nod to Taane’s famously bold move of pulling his catalogue from the streaming platform in favour of independence. Punk rock isn’t dead; it just built its own distribution network.
Near the end, the opening chords of “Always On My Mind” rang out. Phones went skyward. Voices soared. This song, once a New Zealand juggernaut, still carries weight. It’s communal nostalgia wrapped in dub warmth.
But crowd size ultimately proved irrelevant. Yes, elsewhere in the city Good Charlotte, Yellowcard, and Tadpole were pulling their own audiences, while next door at Spark Arena Aussie outfit Ocean Alley hosted a sea of thousands.
But wisdom in gig-going isn’t about scale, it’s about spirit.
And tonight, spirit won.
Taane finished with blistering vocal acrobatics, rapid-fire sing-rapping at breakneck speed, smiling like a man exactly where he’s meant to be. DUB FX, still in motion, still looping, still possessed by rhythm.
For those who chose the intimate over the immense, this wasn’t just a concert. It was a showcase of independence, innovation and shared vibration.
Sometimes the best nights aren’t the ones with queues around the block.
Sometimes they’re the ones where you walk in first and leave transformed.
Reviewer: Paul Marshall
Photography by Paul Marshall
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